Make Your Customers Feel Appreciated: How to Increase Customer Retention

Customers aren’t always easy to gain, but they’re easy to lose. For most business owners, customer retention is at the top of their priorities.

Customer relationships work differently than they did years ago. Today’s consumers have more options than ever, which means they can be—and are—highly selective about the type of businesses they patronize and partner with. 

To be successful, businesses must place a high value on the new customer relationships they build and put in place specific strategies to improve their retention rates. Below, we’ll cover some of the most effective ways to ensure your customers always feel appreciated by your business.

Exceptional Customer Service

It’s no secret that providing good customer service is vital in business. But what makes a “good” customer experience a “great” one?

Providing exceptional customer service means that your organization puts the customer first before all else. Businesses should view customers the same way employees view upper management. Their opinions, requests, and disappointments should be understood and felt equally by everyone in the company.

Keeping your customers in this light means that the business works tirelessly to respond to requests quickly and efficiently while resolving any issues as soon as possible. Employees should also have clear perspectives on where their priorities are when handling other business tasks and balancing the needs of customers. Ensuring they feel trained and empowered to handle complicated situations limits certain situations from escalating and helps customers feel more confident about the support they’re receiving.

Personalized Relationship Management

Delivering exceptional customer service creates a strong foundation of trust with customers, but other engagement strategies are also valuable when building strong relationships. One of these is creating more personalized interactions between customers and the brand.

No one wants to feel like they’re being read a script when interacting with a business. While you may have specific policies or procedures that account managers or customer service agents use to provide support, this doesn’t mean businesses shouldn’t personalize their approach. Remembering and mentioning important dates relevant to the customer or engaging in more casual conversations is a great way to add a personal touch to all relationship management activities.

Exclusive Reward Programs

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a one-time or repeat customer - everyone wants to feel valued by the businesses they support. What better way to show your appreciation than by providing opportunities to gain rewards when making recurring purchases?

Exclusive reward programs are the perfect way to motivate customers to engage continuously with your brand and provide real rewards for doing so. The great thing is that there are many different ways to implement incentives into your business model. Whether offering tangible rewards like gift cards for completing certain purchases or providing early access to new product lines or promotional offers, businesses can get creative when creating more incentives for customers.

Another way to improve your word-of-mouth marketing is to offer referral bonuses to customers willing to refer others to you. This encourages customers to get more involved in advocating for their favorite brands and shows appreciation for their efforts.

Providing the Unexpected

Customers often remember the little things the most—especially when they weren’t expecting them in the first place. Looking for ways to continuously provide more than what your customers are asking for is the perfect way to differentiate your brand from the rest.

Depending on your business format, there are many different ways to surprise your customers with small tokens of appreciation. These could include offering them free samples with their purchases, future discount codes, or free access to certain third-party services. 

Of course, looking for opportunities to overdeliver when it comes to issue resolutions is another way to show your customers mean a lot to your business. The point is, just because your customers only “expect” a certain level of service doesn’t mean they don’t “deserve” more. Actively looking for these opportunities to wow them is what real relationship building is all about and goes a long way in helping to keep your customers happy.

Valuing Ongoing Feedback

Customers want to be heard. As a good business partner, you should find ways to help them achieve this without trying to moderate or devalue their feedback and opinions. Businesses should seek out as many ways as possible to gather customer feedback since addressing any ongoing concerns benefits the organization and its relationships.

One of the easiest ways to gather important insights from customers is to ask them directly to share their thoughts or suggestions using various channels, including surveys, review sites, or customer service feedback follow-ups. However, it’s important not just to collect the feedback and move on - you should also be acknowledging comments that are left, regardless of whether they’re positive or negative.

Taking the time to implement any suggestions customers make is a powerful way to show that their opinions really matter, and it can go a long way toward improving your brand reputation with others.

Providing Helpful Content

The content you create says a lot about your business priorities. Providing helpful content resources to your customers—especially when it’s not just self-serving marketing materials—strengthens your relationship with them and helps establish your brand as an industry thought leader. 

You can start by identifying common issues customers may have in their business or surrounding relevant industry topics and creating a content planner to help address them. Although blog posts or white papers are a good way to achieve this, you can also provide other valuable resources. These could include free downloadable assets like templates, buying guides, decision-support tools, and calculators or resources that show your business isn’t just focused on profits.

Give Your Customers the Experiences They Deserve

Your customers are an invaluable asset to your business, and it's important to treat them accordingly. By following the guidelines discussed, you’ll ensure that your customers always feel valued by your company and are less likely to explore other market options.

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Author Name: Cindy Mielke

Author bio: Cindy is passionate about the incentive industry. In addition to her role as Vice President of Strategic Partners here at Tango, she is a Certified Professional of Incentive Management who proudly serves on two industry boards. When she’s not working, Cindy enjoys spending time with her family—including three cats, two dogs, and a horse—and sharing her love of nature as a Nebraska Master Naturalist.

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